Last Monday I was in this school, which now bears the name "Universidad" but one that will always be for me the Colegio de Santa Isabel.
I was not expecting much that night; I was there to provide moral support to Beth, my sister-in-law and my niece, Teris, who were both playing the violin as part of the symphony orchestra of music majors, faculty and alumni.
We came in just as the musicians were filing in. The conductor followed and soon the title of the piece the orchestra would play was flashed on the small screen, stage left. Antonio San Buenaventura's "Mindanao Sketches." That was not your regular musical piece. Evoking - and exoticizing - the sounds of Southern Philippines, the work demanded that some other instruments be used. Those instruments the audience that night soon discovered much to their amusement were not the kind that you associated with anything "musical."
Right in the middle of the symphonic music rising, the voices of some of the musicians also rose, half wailing and half chanting. Soon, the musicians were dropping down their respective musical instruments as they created sounds with their hands slapping their thighs. Unorthodox. Unusual. Daring.
In another place, in a big city perhaps, that piece would be just one of those experimentations in music, not even avant-garde at all. But in this small city of Naga, that music was one that could provoke rather than lull. Soon, the playing ended.
The playing was uneven. And, I believe the conductor would agree. Mr. Aldecoa, the conductor, guided his small group of musicians to the difficult piece. Later, I would learn that the performers had some few weeks to practice. If that night the musicians were beaming, I would not blame them. They were performing musical miracles after another. They were paying tribute to personal interests to culture and music, paying tribute to songs that one did not know anymore, conjuring the world of music and arts and their intricacies and refinements. That balmy night, Mr. Aldecoa was showing the gift of this college, of this university whose status sprung from its brave and daring ways with music. That night, after almost forty years, I realized that this colegio had always been consistent - or even stubborn - about its passion of teaching this city about music that other institutions soon tired of.
As young boys in the parochial school nearby, we always connected Colegio with things cultural. Weekends were the time when we could stay out late because there was an operetta or recital in Colegio. In my memory, its auditorium was the only one deserving that name. Ateneo had the gym and the rest just had small stages. Colegio had a site for performances that were almost sacred, in the theater sense of it. One did not go to Colegio in flip-flops. And one did not make noise in that hall. One became an expert in that place. Or at least tried to.
In a city where there were no concert halls, Colegio was the only place one came into contact with music that were so lengthy and incomprehensible one felt we were being punished by the gods to listen to them. I remembered rushing to Yeebros, the records shop in the city, to look for an LP (a long-playing album) that would have that piece called "Warsaw Concerto." That was my initiation to classical music. The record that I bought then was Liberace's version. Liberace was this flamboyant pianist who popularized (as in shortened ) and simplified classical music. I was confused because in Colegio, I listened to a darker, more ominous version of the one-movement concerto. While Liberace's rendition was highly melodic and reminded me of a sad love story, the version played in CSI auditorium, told me of a world that was on the brink of destruction. It made me think. For the first time, a music made me think, and not simply made me tap my foot.
That night, I was back in that concert hall of the Colegio I know. It was once more a night at the opera, although no opera was playing. The place felt just an opera. Formal and grand.
That night I met old friends: Titan Roco, who is known now as Cristina Avila, she of the sweetest soprano this side of the land. Then I met Mely Saenz, the great mentor and conductor behind winning choral groups and who from now has to accept that she will be known as the mother of Jonathan Saenz, the world-class bass-baritone.
Informally that night, I met the president of the school, Sr. Ma. Asuncion G. Evidente, D.C. She was apologetic about the performance. But that night, I wanted to tell her there was no need for apologies. I wanted to thank her for her school that introduced to a young boy many, many years ago music that was not played over the radio, songs composed by composers like Rachmaninoff and many others whose names I could not spell out and pronounce, and instruments that linked me to distant histories, to some gods and spirits, and even to some unknown places like Warsaw.